Welcome, or welcome back as the case may be, to The B2B Weekly Roundup, where we offer our take on some of the key developments affecting B2B marketing in bite-size form. Google’s I/O conference gave us all a glimpse into the firm’s integration plans; Godfrey’s Andy Hunt assesses the impact on B2B.  Separately, we note the opportunity to highlight your company’s deep expertise via web content for improved search results. Leanne Terpak poses a few key questions for marketers on the use of Big Data and suggests the most important thing is to turn insights gleaned into useful actions.  We share the inspiring story of a 17-year-old girl who won a Twitter hackathon as an example of the creativity that awaits B2B marketers in the social media space.  And finally, in case you missed BtoB Magazine’s Media Power 50 report, it’s worth a look; after The Wall Street Journal and WSJ.com, Google and LinkedIn occupy the #2 and #3 positions in the B2B media landscape.  No further comment on that one here, for now.  Enjoy and let us know how we’re doing.

As a B2B marketing pro, you have a lot to keep up with.  We’re right there with you.  Now we’re right here with you, too, offering our take on some of the week’s most interesting news and powerful insights in the world of business-to-business marketing and communications.  As we work out the schedule and topics I hope you’ll leave comments to let us know how to improve.  Out of the gate, we’re committed to covering Search, Analytics, Social Media and Content Marketing and providing an anchor Digital Trend Watch.  We know you’re busy.  We hope this helps by giving you a quick handle on the relevant trends.  Your feedback will help us do that better.  Thanks, and welcome.

With increasing frequency, I find myself discussing focus as a key growth driver for B2B companies in 2013. Obviously, the term “focus” can mean many things to many people. For some, focus applies to operational efficiency. For others, focus relates to market segmentation. Some organizations, like the Institute for the Study of Business Markets, even offer extensive seminars on the topic. In this context, however, I’m referring to focus as it pertains to new business development – choosing the right customers.

If you want to win in the NFL, there’s a lot you can learn from B2B. For starters, here are five important lessons that NFL teams can learn from B2B marketers.

Art galleries and movie theaters might help you stir a few B2B marketing ideas. But nothing beats your own manufacturing facility.

For many B2B companies it can be a struggle to align all four of the P's with the realities of a business-to-business marketing strategy. See how Motorola Solutions has evolved the thinking behind the model.

Unified marketing takes “integrated marketing” to another level. While integrated marketing is about tactics working together, unified marketing starts with the strategy and concept and drives all messaging and tactical decisions. Here’s how to try it during the 2013 marketing planning cycle.

Are you starting to think about your marketing strategy for 2013? While identifying the next campaign or product launch comes first, don’t forget to organize how you’re going to create and distribute your plan. Here are some tips to keep your internal content creation process running smoothly.

John Deere apparel. CAT® footwear. Armor All™ vacuums. All highly recognized brand names, but who knew they made these types of products? Well, actually, they don’t. They are products of manufacturers who believe in the potential of brand licensing. With the right pairing of license and product offering, manufacturers can bypass entrance barriers in a crowded marketplace through higher brand recognition, stronger customer preference and a perceived quality differential. But, there are considerations when choosing such a strategy…

We have written about the importance of customer insight and unified marketing. For B2B and technology-oriented companies, it isn’t always easy to think beyond the product features. But here is one example of a marketer who is launching a new initiative to build the customer perspective into its global marketing organization.

Whether you’re a content strategy veteran or are just getting started, Margot’s new book "Content Strategy at Work" is a must-read for everyone. Read on to hear about Margot’s inspiration for writing the book and her thoughts on how b2b marketers can leverage content strategy with clients.

It's been hard to miss all the co-mingling of marketing and IT that has been taking place over the past few years. As the volume of work shared between the groups increases and the pace accelerates here are a few things to keep in mind to ease the integration.

According to Forrester Research, spending on email marketing, delivery, analytics, integration and creative will approach $2.5 billion annually by 2016, up from $1.5 billion in 2011, a compound annual growth rate of 10 percent. Since email is becoming more valuable in the B2B market, I encourage you to take a second look at your email marketing strategy and examine what your database of email addresses is worth.

As B2B marketing efforts become more integrated, the line between paid, shared and earned media is becoming blurred. A successful marketing plan must incorporate all three, with focused messaging and strategic outreach. Find out what role PR plays in the overall marketing plan.

A recent article in Advertising Age (“When CMOs Learn to Love Data, They'll Be VIPs in the C-Suite”) provides some empirical support for an idea we’ve strongly suggested in the past: Marketers need to support their decisions with data if they hope to play a serious role in their organization’s future.

Howard Stern knows how to re-purpose content. Marketers should take a lesson from his playbook.

After reading the excellent blog by my colleague Leanne Terpak on establishing KPIs, my thoughts returned to a topic I had raised earlier: If KPIs and the analytics they drive are so important, why aren’t we doing better with them? What is stopping us?

Millennials are moving onto B2B buying teams and influencing product and service purchase decisions. Are you ready to communicate with them?

Customer Relationship Management has been around for quite a while now, and has been a key item in many B2B marketing strategies. It's lost a little of its sexy veneer— no longer the hot buzzword of a decade or so ago. Here are some tips on how to change your thinking, and your approach, to CRM.

How do companies go about creating a corporate social responsibility program? Here are a few simple steps.

With refreshed yearly budgets and objectives planned, now is a great time to establish new priorities and explore the possibility of thinking differently in your daily B2B work. I recently read a Fast Company blog post that discusses the notion of embracing the importance of accurate “small stuff”.

To continue my series of blog posts on B2B web analytics basics, here we’re going to take a closer look at Key Performance Indicators and what you need to know about them.

Media interviews can be intimidating, however, there are several techniques that a spokesperson can implement which will allow them to succeed at any interview. There are several myths that spokespeople cannot afford to believe as well as tips and tricks to help the spokesperson stay on message.

We know you’ve got lots of questions about social media. Here is one that you’re probably seeking answers to, but don’t need to be.

If I'm being completely honest, I'm probably the least "social" social media professional you know.

Creating effective surveys for B2B research is both a science and an art. The key is to engage the respondent, encourage well-thought-out answers, and – regardless of the medium used for the survey – keep respondents from “mailing it in.”

Recently I launched my first Facebook advertising program. I’ll be honest: I was skeptical. After all, no one clicks on those little ads—or do they?

When Godfrey decided to produce our first e-book, it was quite the undertaking. Here are five tips I picked up along the way.

As 2012 B2B marketing planning should be in full-swing, I find myself internally rationalizing the necessity of early planning. A topical analogy seems evident as the 2012 Presidential Election is one year from today.

A recent article in Ad Age presents the social media dilemma expressed by many large, global B2B companies: not knowing what to Tweet about.

Big ideas are like sea turtles. About 1 in 100 make it out of the nest alive but only 1 in 40,000 survive to adulthood. That’s because truly original ideas sound strange at first. They are usually squashed as soon as they hatch. So, the success of a big idea depends on selling it from day one.

The recent Wisconsin-Michigan State game was a perfect analogy to marketing communications. While the game-winning play got all the attention, every other play and decision had a part in the final outcome.

If the objective is to appeal to the audience, then why do so many B2B companies approach communications like a bad first date--only talking about themselves? There is a better way.

A recent survey of CEOs found a vast percentage were frustrated with their company’s marketers and felt they failed to provide useful information about the role marketing plays in achieving business success.

As a parent and a marketer I’m always looking for the positives. Looking at my teens, it became clear to me that there are some basic lessons that span both areas of my life. 

It all starts with a plan. Without it you can quickly find yourself careening down the rabbit hole with no bread crumb trail to help find your way out. Through my experience, I’m still amazed to see the number of companies that don’t value, or maybe appreciate, the power of well thought out and monitored analytics. 

Building a solid, lasting perception of your company depends on how well you align short-term marketing initiatives with larger brand objectives and common-sense brand stewardship. As you battle to defend and grow your brand, keep these five basic tips in mind...

As hockey great Wayne Gretzky once said, there is no point in bothering to go where the action has been, but rather it is more important to go where the action will be. That concept, my friends, is true for so many things in life—not just hockey, but also to social media and measuring its success.

Thought leadership is a phrase that is thrown around a lot in strategy meetings and planning sessions, the idea being that you can build brand loyalty and active audience participation by sharing fresh insight that provides direction or even solutions to common challenges many of your customers face.

One of the staples of cause marketing is that in addition to doing good, the proposed cause marketing campaign should benefit the business. But I’d like to raise the bar.

Okay, so maybe you’ve actually met your CFO. Unless you are a close confidante, however, you may not know what keeps him, or her, awake at night.

It’s hard to come up with a strategy, or art direct, design, etc. without insight about the target audience. Insight is more than just knowing who your audience is — it's knowing and understanding who your audience really is.

We’ve all heard life is like a box of chocolates, I’ve recently heard email marketing is like a restaurant, but I feel I can really relate a successful B2B marketing team to the workings of a renowned hospital.

Content strategy — perhaps the latest buzzword — has taken the marketing world by storm. So what’s with all the hype?

A recent study by the Pew Research Center reinforces the idea that for a growing number of people, there is no such thing as a mobile Internet.

In its most recent issue, BtoB magazine published a survey of B2B marketing analytics in which most respondents confess relatively minimal involvement in analyzing their web data for marketing insights.

Do you ever hear this around your office: “Research is too expensive. And anyway, we know who our customers are.” We recently completed a project that proved how, in B2B marketing, a little insight leads to a better strategy, which drives a better creative solution. And it isn’t as difficult, time-consuming or expensive as you might think. 

Do you own,  operate or plan on browsing a web site in the next 12 months? If you answered yes then there are some new privacy regulations coming out of the European Union which will affect you. We're still in the early stages of this but there are a few basic things you can do now to start preparing.

Marketers today need to create maximum value with a minimum budget. And yes, marketing analytics can definitely help. Over my next few blog posts, I plan to discuss the basics of B2B analytics in a series, providing some primary education on this topic and taking a look at the actionable information that can come out of crunching the numbers.

If you’re a B2B marketer and you haven’t jumped on the mobile marketing bandwagon, now would be a good time to hop onboard.

There’s a lot of buzz these days about B2B publishers offering more “marketing services” and thereby competing with agencies (including Godfrey) who are also traditional partners in planning and delivering marketing communications for mutual clients.

If “B2B Branding” was a company, it would have a branding problem. Too many business-to-business marketers and senior managements think branding means logos, taglines, business cards and letterhead. It’s a lot more than that today.

Learn what a QR code is, what the benefits are as well as the top eight best practices you should keep in mind before charging ahead.

Looking for a clever or interesting way to communicate your brand message? Consider taking some risks. Experiment with crazy solutions. Even if your ideas don’t make it all the way to the audience, there is value in asking the questions. But when the they do work out, it’s the icing on the cake.

Done properly, primary B2B research can set up, not just a “win-win,” but a “win-win-win,” benefiting a company, their customers and their end users, the consumers.